Matisse

It's been a while since I last wrote and I have so many things I need to post about - like Rohan's birthday, that just went by! - that I don't know where to start.To get out of this negative loop, let me break the ice by sharing a couple of random pieces of information about my boys:

• Rajiv can recognize "The Goldfish" painting if he sees it and knows it is by Matisse. He also knows it is called "The Goldfish". But he always tells me it is a picture of a hat. Can you see why?
  
• I told Rajiv that I was born in Italy and so was he, whereas Rohan was born in Canada. Since then Rohan keeps saying "me too, meee tooo! I born Italy toooooo!"
  
• We tried to grow beans in a cup. We got two cups, one for Rohan and one for Rajiv, then we filled them with soil and put some beans inside. Rajiv's beans sprouted and grew really fast, so we transplanted them into a pot outside and they are surviving so far. Rohan's beans never sprouted. For a while I gained time telling him that they were hiding, but secretely I dug them up and they look just like when they were put in there, no change at all. Sigh..
  
• It's summer. Appu likes to wear big explorer's hats. Rohan tolerates the hat - sometimes - but what he really wants is sunglasses, because the sun hurts his eyes. Appu prefers to wear long sleeve shirts, even when it is so hot that most people would rather not wear anything at all. Rohan doesn't mind wearing shirts of whatever kind (but if they have a firetruck or a frog it is obviously much better), however he really doesn't like wearing pants or underwear or anything that might cover his lower bum. Mamma thought insists on the pants - at least outside.
  

A truckload of pictures from France - Part II

Ancora un po' di foto parigine. Le prime in Rue Mouffetard, vicino all'istituto dove lavora il collaboratore di S. Le altre foto poi documentano i nostri inutili tentativi di andare a visitare Notre Dame.

The title of this installment of pictures is "Let's go at least to see Notre Dame".

This is Rue Mouffetard, a nice street featured in the touristic guides for the French atmosphere of the market and all the little food stores. It is also very near the Ecole Normale, where S's collaborator works, so we went there often.





You will remember that Rajiv was sick for most of our trip, and soon his dad joined him, so we didn't spend much time outdoors. Plus, the weather was rainy and not very inviting. However, from the map it seemed that Notre Dame shouldn't be too far from Rue Mouffetard, so one day we set out to reach it on foot from the office during S's lunch break.

It wasn't a bad walk and we stopped here and there, but it was longer than we had expected.



By the time we reached the Seine and we could see Notre Dame S said firmly "Now take this picture and let's go back". So this ended our first missed visit.



I was however quite impressed, very unusually I must say, so I decided we should try and go back.

We got our chance on the last Friday of our visit. S had already decided to take the morning off to do something touristic one way or another and, since the weather looked great for a change, we decided to take the Metro to a nearby stop and then walk to Notre Dame. This time I wanted to go in and see the gargoyles on the roof, as a basic plan of action.

But. The weather was so good that it seemed we owed it to Appu to make him play somewhere outside, after his long confinement at home. Just by the cathedral there is a little park, so we thought we could spend a half hour there.


Appu walked around very happily, but he also appeared to be looking for something.


He walked for a few minutes, moving quickly and looking carefully around. I followed.


Then he said: "Slide? Where!" To which I replied, feeling very sad: "Mi dispiace Appu, lo scivolo non c'e'..." ("Sorry Appu, there is no slide") "Non c'e'!", he echoed. He seemed sad and yet satisfied that his investigation had yielded the correct result. There is no slide.


But if that is the case, we might as well leave. And as quickly as he had walked in, he headed back for the gate and left. We ran after him ad caught him on the sidewalk, but at this point he didn't seem to be in any mood to go and see the interior of a Gothic cathedral.

We look around still undecided and we saw a stop of one of those sightseeing buses with the open roof. It seemed like a good way to use our sunny free morning and so we bought two tickets and hopped on. Bye bye Notre Dame, see you next time.